1 A Dose of Death

by Gin Jones

  Helen wondered how many of the recommendations in Melissa's files had been written under threat of the patient's walker being confiscated. Still, none of the recommendations had been anything more than adequate, not the sort of thing that would have prospective employers chasing after Melissa. "If Pierce didn't want her for her knowledge or her bedside manner, then what did he want her for?"

  Betty glanced around the room until she found the CNA trying to coax a scruffy old man out of the far corner of the room. Even with the CNA occupied and a good distance away, Betty leaned forward and whispered, "Insider information."

  Josie copied Betty's actions, checking on the location of the CNA before adding, "Pierce has contracts with the nursing home to provide some of the services here, and he does a crummy job of it. We think he used Melissa's knowledge of the nursing home to get really favorable terms in his contracts. He knew all the right buttons to push when he was pitching to the board of directors, so they didn't look at the contracts all that carefully."

  "Some people think he's been using her inside knowledge to run an insurance scam," Betty said. "You hear about that sort of thing in the news all the time. Billing for services never provided. There have been a lot of complaints about cancelled physical therapy sessions lately, ever since that work was subcontracted to his agency. It would be easier to do that sort of thing if you had an employee who could identify good targets, the ones who don't pay any attention to their medical records and who don't have family members keeping an eye on them."

  "Someone from the nursing home's administration must be keeping an eye on him," Helen said.

  "Not really," Betty said. "The administrative staff here has enough to do with all the paperwork and all the rules and regulations they need to follow, and they don't get involved in individual patients' issues unless someone complains repeatedly, and most of us don't have enough energy to do that."

  "What about their board of directors?"

  "Everyone on the board is a volunteer," Betty said. "Most of them have a relative living here, and that's why they're on the board, to make sure that family member is taken care of. As long as their family members are happy, the board members aren't interested in hearing about anyone else's complaints."

  "Someone had to have noticed if there was widespread fraud," Helen said. "Detective Peterson spends time here, and his job is investigating crimes. And I know Geoff Loring spends a lot of time here. If there's widespread fraud, wouldn't he have heard about it?"

  "He's as bad as the board of directors," Josie said. "He's got a cousin living here, so as long as the cousin seems reasonably happy, Geoff doesn't want to notice the little, annoying problems., "

  "What about his big story? The one he kept talking about? "That was just Geoff, always trying to sound important. He didn't have anything," Betty said. "Ironic really, since someone apparently thought he was onto something and assaulted him for it."

  "Maybe there really is a big story, even if he didn't actually know it." Helen had a sudden thought. "Do you know if he did a story on Melissa leaving the nursing home for her new job?"

  "I can't remember," Josie said, looking at Betty, who shook her head.

  "What if he interviewed her, and someone thought she had told him something controversial about one of her patients, something that person didn't want investigated. Then Geoff starts talking about his big story, and the person thinks that killing Melissa will stop the investigation, but it doesn't, so then the person goes after Geoff too."

  "It's possible," Betty said. "But Melissa's seen an awful lot of patients over the years, and there's far too much gossip flying around here to even begin to figure out who might have been desperate enough to commit murder to keep something quiet. Everyone's got something to be embarrassed about."

  Still, Helen thought, at least now she had a lead of sorts. She just had to narrow down the possibilities a bit. "How many people are there in the nursing home?"

  "Including just the patients and staff? Without their visitors?" Betty said. "A couple hundred. Double that, if you include the family members who visit regularly.

  "That makes four hundred people who might have wanted Melissa dead." So much for thinking she was making progress. It would have been a stretch for the local police department to interview and background-check that many people; it was completely impossible for Helen to do it alone, even armed with a spreadsheet and search engines. "That's almost as big a list as the people who've threatened my ex-husband."

  "I wish we could be more help. With both the investigation and your crochet skills." Josie pointed to the mess in Helen's lap. "You've missed a few stitches in that last row."

  Helen pulled out the row she'd just completed. "I'm as bad at this as I am at helping Jack prove he didn't kill Melissa."

  "Jack Clary can take care of himself," Betty said. "He's been in all sorts of scrapes over the years from what I've heard, and he never ended up in jail."

  "Until now," Josie said.

  "At least he's out on bail," Helen said.

  "Probably not for long, though," Josie said. "Detective Peterson was here visiting his father earlier today, and we heard him talking about the case. He said Jack had called them with some wild story about being afraid for his life because someone had mugged him on his way home last night and told him to leave town. Everyone at the police station thought it was funny, that he was making it up as some sort of publicity stunt to convince them he was innocent."

  "He is innocent, and Jack wasn't making it up," Helen said, stuffing her yarn and needle into her too-small purse. Two muggings in this little town, both with ties to Melissa, and the police couldn't see that something was seriously wrong. Maybe Tate could do something about getting Jack some police protection. "I've got to go. Call me if you think of anything that might help narrow down the suspects."

  * * *

  When Helen arrived back at her cottage, Tate was sitting on the front porch steps. He was up and across the front yard, opening the taxi's back door for her before the driver could do it.

  "I don't like this," Tate said as the taxi was leaving.

  "What did I do now?" Helen said. "You waylaid me, not the other way around."

  "Adam called to tell me that Jack was mugged," he said. "I don't like it. Things are escalating, and you're in the middle of it."

  "I'm not in the middle of anything except a bunch of trees," Helen said, on her way to the front door. "No one takes me seriously."

  "I do," Tate said, following. "Okay, I didn't at first, but I do now. We don't get random muggings in Wharton. Not like what happened to Jack. I've had to listen to almost as many arraignments as Judge Nolan has, while waiting for my clients' cases to be called. In pretty much all the assault cases I've ever observed, the assailant and the victim knew each other, and more often than not they were under the influence of something. Alcohol, drugs, hormones. That sort of thing. But according to Jack, his assailant came out of nowhere, knocked him down, and told him to leave town before he got what was coming to him."

  "I bet the police think one of his burglary victims came after him." Helen unlocked her front door.

  "That's what I thought at first, and it's definitely the simplest explanation." Tate followed her inside, and wandered around the great room, checking out her bookshelves and inspecting the construction of her built-in desk cabinetry.

  "But not the only explanation." Helen left her cane at the front door and went over to the kitchen. The spring air wasn't particularly warm today, and Tate had probably gotten chilled while outside waiting for her. "What if Melissa's killer tried to scare him into running?"

  "I'm listening." Tate dropped onto one of the stools at the kitchen island. "Convince me it was the killer."

  Of course now when she wanted to be wrong, Tate had to go and believe her. Or at least not disbelieve her. "For one thing, Jack's victims were low-level jerks. Not violent. And it would take some work to have found him. Plus, they'd have to have a certain mindset to attac
k him physically. It's not like Jack hurt anyone, so why escalate to assault instead of just accepting compensation for the things he took?"

  "Crime isn't entirely rational."

  "Okay, but Jack isn't the only person who was assaulted and warned off." Helen opened a can of chicken noodle soup and dumped it into a small tureen with a pouring spout. "The reporter, Geoff Loring, was too. Someone beat him up, broke his wrist, and told him to stop investigating the nursing home. Like you said, Wharton is a small town, and two muggings like this with a common thread are more likely to be related than not."

  "What's the common thread?"

  "Melissa. She used to work at the nursing home before she joined the agency that assigned her to me." Helen placed the soup bowl in the microwave and slammed the door shut. "Melissa's death and Geoff's nursing home story could be related. Betty and Josie think Melissa might have been involved in insurance fraud while working for Pierce's agency. She could have been killed to cover up the fraud, and then Jack became a convenient scapegoat."

  "That's assuming facts not in evidence, that there was a fraud scheme and she was involved with it."

  "But it would be so perfect if it was true," Helen said. "I can't think of anyone I'd rather see behind bars than Pierce, and if his agency was committing fraud, I doubt their contracts would be enforceable, so you wouldn't have to waste any more of your retirement time helping your nephew get my contract cancelled."

  "Just because he's a convenient scapegoat doesn't make him guilty. Jack is a convenient scapegoat too, according to the police," Tate said. "A lot of assaults are just a matter of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police could be right that Melissa was killed by a burglar, even if it wasn't Jack. Wharton isn't too small to have more than one burglar, even if it doesn't have multiple muggers. You're a wealthy woman, living in an out-of-the-way house, an appealing target for thieves."

  "I'm tougher than I look." Helen tried not to disprove her words as she carried the steaming bowl of soup to the kitchen island. "If you're right about what happened, then the not-Jack burglar is casing the joint, Melissa shows up, confronts him, and he kills her. It's possible I suppose, but it just doesn't feel right. For one thing, where'd he get the murder weapon? Melissa was killed outside, not in here where the cane would have been at hand waiting for him to grab it. And if he managed to break into the cottage, there are more valuable things for him to steal, so why would he only take the cane."

  "Melissa must have had it with her." Tate frowned as he came around the island to rummage through her drawers for soup spoons. "You're right. That doesn't make sense."

  Helen paused in the act of reaching for soup bowls. "Actually, maybe it does. Betty and Josie told me that Melissa used to take the patients' walkers as a sort of hostage until they did what she wanted them to. I bet she took my cane and let me think I'd lost it, so I'd feel indebted to her when she found it. Or so I'd be desperate to negotiate with her to get it back."

  Tate took the bowls from her and placed them next to the tureen. "That would explain why she was here the morning she was killed. She came to return the cane, and instead she stumbled across a burglary."

  "I'm still not buying it," Helen said. "Melissa would never have confronted a burglar directly. I'm sure she's performed heroic life-saving procedures like CPR as part of her job, but much as I hate to admit it, she wasn't stupid. If she'd seen someone suspicious in the yard, she'd have done the sensible thing: picked up her cell phone and called the cops. She wouldn't have tried to stop him herself."

  "Let's say it wasn't any kind of burglar who killed her, then," Tate said. "Why would someone want to kill Melissa?"

  "Because she was annoying."

  "You think everyone is annoying."

  "They are. But she was even worse than most. She never stopped talking."

  "About what?"

  Helen poured the soup into the individual bowls and gestured for Tate to eat while she tried to recreate the monologues she'd worked so hard to ignore when they were actually happening. "Melissa went on and on about how much she loved nursing, and all the years she'd worked at the nursing home, and how many people she'd cared for there."

  "Maybe someone thought she knew something she shouldn't, and that she'd spill their secrets. Something that wasn't a problem as long as she was just talking to nursing home residents but could be a problem if someone outside found out about it."

  Helen thought about the things Melissa had told her about her patients. "I have to admit, Melissa really wasn't a malicious gossip. All her stories were about how nice her clients were and how much they loved her."

  "Still, she might have said something that wasn't meant to be widely known. In which case, you might have heard whatever it was that Melissa knew," Tate said between mouthfuls of soup. "And whoever silenced her would have a motive to come after you so you wouldn't tell anyone else."

  "But I don't talk to anyone," Helen said. "Everyone knows that."

  "You talk to me."

  "Lawyer-client privilege," she said. "You can't tell anyone about anything I say, so it wouldn't become public knowledge. We're both safe."

  "It's a little more complicated than that," Tate said, but he had the good sense not to go into any of the details her husband would have shared with her in the same circumstances. It was one of the things she didn't dislike about Tate.

  "What I said about Melissa being annoying is complicated too. She was supposed to be helping me, but most of the time she made things more difficult. She tripped me once, and another time she managed to spill water all over my most critical pills, completely ruining them."

  Tate shook his head ruefully. "Why do clients always leave out the most important facts and then wonder why I can't help them?"

  "Melissa's clumsiness isn't important," Helen said, reluctant to discuss her frailties with someone who looked like he'd never had a frail moment in his life. "I hardly even remember the incidents."

  "What if they weren't accidents?"

  "They had to be," Helen said automatically, even as the possibility settled over her, causing her to shiver in a way that the hot soup couldn't fix. "She'd have been fired if anyone found out she was intentionally endangering me. Why would she risk it?"

  "Either she didn't think you'd tell on her, or she had some reason to think she couldn't be fired from her current job." Tate helped himself to the last of the soup. "She had to know you weren't the type to keep quiet, so she must have thought her job was secure, no matter what she did."

  "Maybe Pierce was desperate for employees."

  "No one's desperate enough to keep an employee who's committing blatant malpractice."

  "Unless the employee is more of a partner in crime than an employee," Helen said. "What if Betty and Josie are right, that Pierce hired Melissa specifically to help him scam the nursing home patients?"

  "Then why was she endangering you? You're not in the nursing home."

  "Not for want of everyone trying to make me go there. Melissa and Pierce could have been trying to convince me that I really did need full-time residential care. Then once I was in the nursing home, they could bill my insurer for all sorts of things that I don't really need, which would only make it seem more reasonable that I needed to be there, and also make it harder for me to get out again."

  "Insurance fraud would explain a lot," Tate said. "Co-conspirators have a falling out, tempers are frayed, violence ensues, and a head is bashed."

  "Just another boring case, in legal terms," Helen said. "It shouldn't be all that difficult for you to prove, and then Jack will be out of danger."

  "I'm doing this for you, not for Jack." Tate took his empty bowl and hers over to the sink. "I'm acquainted with some members of the nursing home's board of directors. I doubt they'll say anything about such a sensitive topic over the phone, but they might talk to me in person. I'll go see if any of them have become suspicious about anything going on at the nursing home."

  He wasn't the only one wit
h contacts. It was time to unpack her Rolodex. "I know some people in the Attorney General's office. While you're gone, I'll check with them."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Helen's contacts in the Attorney's General claimed to be unaware of any investigation into insurance fraud at the nursing home, and they'd sounded sincere, but they could have just been telling her the official story, keeping it secret until they had enough evidence for some indictments. In any event, if there really wasn't an ongoing investigation, she had a feeling they'd be starting one now. The local police might not take her seriously, but these contacts knew her from the days when she wasn't just a decrepit old private citizen but was the person in charge of the governor's mansion. She'd even gotten a promise that if there was an investigation and if it did find any wrongdoing, they'd give Geoff Loring some of the credit, maybe even give him a couple hours' advance notice before the official announcement. He deserved something for flushing out the story, even if it had been inadvertent.

  Helen had just tucked her Rolodex back into the cabinet when she heard a car in the gravel driveway. She hoped it was Tate reporting back with whatever he'd found out. Her hip was bothering her, and she just wanted to get this whole thing straightened out, so she could take a painkiller and relax in front of the television. She didn't take the pills very often because they tended to make her so sleepy she couldn't do anything at all, but after the last few days the idea of dozing in her recliner was appealing.

  Helen absently picked up her cane from where it leaned against the front door so she could let Tate inside. Too late, she realized it was Pierce standing on the front porch, rapidly scrolling through messages on his smartphone. Today's cravat was more somber than usual with white dots on a black background.

  "Go away," she told him. "I'm sure Rebecca is a very good nurse, but I don't need her services."

  "Rebecca quit."

  Good for her. The woman did have some gumption after all. Helen just hoped she also had a new job. If not, maybe a recommendation from the governor's ex-wife would help. She'd have Tate's nephew check it out.